Twenty leading drug companies—including Teva Pharmaceuticals,
Pfizer, Novartis, and Mylan—were in cahoots for years to fix and
dramatically inflate the prices of more than 100 generic drugs, in
some cases to raising prices “well over 1,000 percent,” according
to a lawsuit filed late last week by 44 states.

The alleged scheme was intended to ensure that each company was
a “responsible competitor” who was “playing nice in the sandbox” to
get its “fair share” of profits from the drugs. Those drugs
included pills, capsules, ointments, and cream. They range from
oral antibiotics, blood thinners, cancer drugs, contraceptives,
statins, anti-inflammatory drugs, anti-depressants, blood pressure
medications, drugs used to treat HIV, and drugs for ADHD. A full
list of the generic drugs can be found
here.

“We all know that prescription drugs can be expensive,” said New
Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal in a statement. “Now
we know that high drug prices have been driven in part by an
illegal conspiracy among generic drug companies to inflate their
prices.”